When Should You Stop For a School Bus?

The short answer: Whenever it's stopped. But learn your state laws on the details

Kids often start
a new
school year by reviewing
what they learned in previous years. Along those lines, it wouldn’t hurt
if motorists took a refresher course on school bus safety. According to
the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Information Services, cars
and other vehicles drive – sometimes very quickly – past stopped school
buses more than 70,000 times a day.

You can see just how
potentially tragic passing a school bus could be in this video from April 2015, when a speeding SUV
missed plowing into three small kids by mere inches as the children walked
toward a waiting school bus.

The National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports
that between 2007 to 2016, 1,282 people of all ages were killed
in school-transportation-related crashes—an average of 128 fatalities per year.

If you’re often behind
the wheel at the same time school buses are making the rounds – typically between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. and 3 p.m and 4 p.m. – it’s vital to know how to share the road safely.

Learn the
rules of the road

Laws regarding school
buses and student transportation vary from state to state. Most state and local
governments take cues from the NHTSA, however, so there’s a fair amount of consistency
across the nation, even though specifics do vary.

For example, the NHTSA
guidelines recommend school buses be painted that familiar yellow-orange – “National School Bus Glossy Yellow” – (which was adopted as the preferred school bus color back in
1939, but the color back then was called “National School Bus Chrome”).
School buses have other uniform features, such as flashing red lights,
cross-view mirrors and stop-sign arms so that drivers from across the nation
will recognize a school bus for what it is.

Here’s another thing
drivers can count on no matter where they are: Passing a school bus with its red lights
flashing and stop-arm extended, that is stopped to load or unload students, is illegal. A
motorist who does this is likely to be in some pretty serious trouble. In New
Jersey, for example, a driver who passes a stopped school bus can wind up with
as many as five points on his or her driver’s license, five points on their car
insurance policy, a fine of at least $100 and maybe even jail time.

But when it comes to
specifics like how far away from a school bus you need to stop or if you
need to stop when approaching a school bus if there's a median between
your car and the bus, the rules vary. The National Association of State
Directors of Pupil Transportation Services sums up the differences between the
state laws here. But because laws are always subject to
change, the organization advises checking with your state Department of Motor
Vehicles to make sure you know the current rules about stopping for a school
bus.